Alaska Democrats - Get Out! - Call! - Drive People to the Polls! - Wave Signs!

Alaska Democrats have an historic opportunity Tuesday. Our registered numbers are up here since 2004, more than for those of the GOP. We have some GREAT candidates at every level. We have more resonant issues. We're well-financed compared to the GOP, for a change (Thank You, FBI!)

Find some time - a few minutes, or several hours - to volunteer today and tomorrow, in your community. Call your candidate's office, and ask how you may help.

Please!

Lisa Murkowski Gives her 2010 Opponent Some Delightful Ammo

I don't believe Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will oppose Murkowski in the 2010 GOP primary. I'm one of many who see a relentlessly downward trajectory in Palin's political future. I predict a recall petition in 2009 easily gaining the necessary signatures to make it onto the ballot.

I also see Stevens losing his appeal, if President Bush doesn't preemptively pardon Stevens in early January. Stevens will lose his office Tuesday, probably by about 25,000 or more votes.

Alaska Democrats, who have had to witness one Alaska GOP figure after another lie through their teeth or convince themselves that "up is down and black is white and right is wrong" since Ted's conviction, can at least rest assured that it isn't only Alaska Republicans that can't handle the truth. Here's Arnold Schwarzenegger over the weekend, commenting on Sen. Barack Obama:

"He needs to do something about those skinny legs, make him do some squats and some bicep curls to build up those scrawny little arms."

heh, heh --- enough said........

Don Young Supporters Can't Avoid Sliming Ethan Berkowitz

Maia at own the sidewalk, Linda at Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis and Steve at what do I know? all commented yesterday about the sleazy one-page flyers being left on doorsteps and doorknobs around Anchorage over the weekend. They appear to be printed at an Anchorage GOP whacko named Joe Law, at his printing company, Nenana Creative Arts.

Creative, indeed. The place is capable of printing great stuff. The flyer, though, looks cheap and - as noted - sleazy. It is also very misleading. It fails to note that since 2000, Don Young has received 116 times as much money from Veco as did Berkowitz.

Linda relates how guiltily and furtively the flyer distributors were, when confronted:

There were many almost-laughable problems with the flyer. However, the bottom of the flyer claimed that it was paid for by "Alaskans for Clean Elections." That was their biggest mistake as Michelle Meyers was going to be FURIOUS that someone was claiming that she paid for anything like this! (I would never want her mad at me...she's tenacious!)

So I called her and what a surprise! She was already in my neighborhood looking for the culprit and threatening legal action!

I gave her the information my daughter and the other kids in the neighborhood had recounted...that there were two guys walking around putting these flyers on all the doors in the neighborhood. I also offered my help, which she accepted, so I jumped in my truck and started searching the neighborhood. I love playing 007!

As it turned out, Michelle found one of the guys. After she explained to him that she would call the police because the flyers were slanderous, the man said that he was given the flyers to put on the doors in our neighborhood...by Joe Law, owner of "Nenana Creative Arts," a printer in town.

As of Sunday evening, Joe the Slime Publisher hadn't returned any of several calls from people investigating the provenance of these flyers.

This flyer flap didn't surprise me. Don Young has always resorted to creating lies about his opponents in a close race. In 1990 and 1992, the lies worked. In 2008, they won't. Don gets voted out of office tomorrow.

I predict Ethan Berkowitz will beat Young by over 20,000 votes. Don will finally have to raise money for his legal fees honestly. We'll see how that goes...

Does anyone have information on how many legislative districts and towns are seeing this flyer or other versions of Don Young slime show up on their doorsteps?

Saradise Lost - Chapter One Hundred-Seventy-Five -- Ye Olde Sarah Palin Primer

From the humor site, 23/6 (click on the picture to expand):

This Ad is Running Heavy in Pennsylvania & Ohio

Saradise Lost - Chapter One Hundred-Seventy-Four -- Saturday Was a Day Palin Will Never Forget

Saturday started out like any other Saturday for a vice presidential candidate, three days before the election, believing her ticket is closing on the opponent - with a lot of bravado. A couple of clips I watched, had her saying "the Democrat Party." Maybe she's been using that misnomer before, but it was the first time I'd heard her use it.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin began November in Florida, trying to scare people. Twice. While the campaign was moving north to her next destination, she thought she got call from the leader of the French nation. It wasn't at 3:00 a.m. It was, however, Sarah Palin's 3:00 a.m. call.

She fucked it up. Totally.

She had to. It was part of her destiny. She believes she is the anointed one. She isn't.

About the same time, John McCain was taping Saturday night's SNL episode with Tina Fey. In the opening episode, featuring McCain and Tina Fey (as Palin), McCain lets Fey tear Palin to shreds.

Do you think Sarah Palin is capable of looking back through November First and understanding that she has become one of the biggest jokes of 21st century American political history? I take that back - the BIGGEST joke in 21st century American political history. Or that the guy the Christian right fucked over immensely in 2000 doesn't realize where his historical defeats then and now came from?

Judy and I invited the Al Jezeera English crew covering election day in Alaska, and some other friends over for dinner Saturday. I love cooking Copper River Sockeye for fact finders discovering Alaska. We had a great time.

One of the people who came up in discussion was Alaska U.S. Senator, Lisa Murkowski. The degree she is supporting Sen. Stevens in election ads is beyond troubling. It is whoring. Either she's been told that Bush actually will pardon Stevens, or she's totally clueless. Lisa - you've created your own problem. Just like Sarah.

Alaska Democrats need to find the solution. I hope we do.

Saradise Lost - Chapter One Hundred-Seventy-Three -- WPD Rape Kit Sale

Saradise Lost - Chapter One Hundred-Seventy-Two -- OMG, What a Fool This Woman Is!

We'll see how long this Youtube stays up...........

Comedy Interlude No. Thirteen

The McCain - Palin Debate

Saradise Lost - Chapter One Hundred-Seventy-One -- Oh, Yeah - There Was This Screwup, Too...

Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, at a rally on October 29th, in Bowling Green, Ohio:

The issue Gov. Palin is bringing up is one of the most desperate moves on the part of the McCain campaign, over the past week or so. Her fabrication of a hateful narrative around this theme is another reason she is totally unfit for higher office, or possibly the one she now occupies.

The McCain campaign has been using Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, and the latter's friendship with Barack Obama, as another divisive issue. Lindsay Beyerstein wrote about aspects of this at majikthise yesterday:

McCain spokesman Micheal Goldfarb embarrassed himself on CNN while attempting to insinuate that Barack Obama's friend Prof. Rashid Khalidi is some kind of antisemitic terrorist.

Goldfarb was asked how McCain can attack Obama when McCain's organization funded Khalidi's NGO. Goldfarb claimed everybody knows about Obama's associations with antisemites, but when pressed, he couldn't think of anyone else to falsely accuse.

Khalidi is, in fact, the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. He's a eminent mainstream scholar, a beloved teacher, and the author of standard university textbooks on the Middle East.

Before I go any further, I just want to say that I agree with Rashid's friend and colleague Barnett Rubin who finds it "demeaning, insulting, and depresssing" to have to defend Khalidi against such transparently ridiculous charges.

Khalidi is an American citizen born and raised in New York City. He was educated at Yale and Oxford. Khalidi became friends with Barack Obama while the two men were teaching at the University of Chicago.

Scott Horton, a human rights lawyer who teaches law and journalism at Columbia, knows Khalidi personally. In a recent blog post, he defended his colleague from right wing attacks by the McCain campaign and its surrogates.

"Rashid Khalidi is an American academic of extraordinary ability and sharp insights," Horton wrote, "He is also deeply committed to stemming violence in the Middle East, promoting a culture that embraces human rights as a fundamental notion, and building democratic societies."

Under John McCain's leadership, the International Republican Institute gave several research grants to Khalidi's foundation, including one 1998 award worth nearly half a million dollars.

Khalidi is a frequent commentator on Middle Eastern affairs in the mainstream media. He is regular guest on the Charlie Rose Show. He has also appeared on ABC News with Peter Jennings, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CBS News, and NPR. His book, Resurrecting Empire, got a good review in the New York Times from a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

John McCain even did a joint interview with Khalidi with Leslie Stahl of CBS in 1991.

Khalidi's critics claim that he was a spokesman Palestine Liberation Organization in the early eighties, a charge he denies. The main "evidence" to support this contention is a 1982 column by Thomas Friedman that describes Khalidi as a spokesman for a Palestinian press agency. Khalidi says Friedman made a mistake.

While he was a professor in Beirut in the early eighties Khalidi often spoke to the media about the P.L.O., but he was a scholar who studied the group, not an employee.

Here's McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb, who has been helping feed Palin this crap, on CNN this week:


Palin brought Khalidi up again this morning, at a rally in New Port Richey, Florida, where the crowd chanted, "John McCain, NOT Hussein, John McCain, not HUSSEIN!"


The McCain campaign, desperate in Florida, is having Palin try to scare Jewish voters about Obama, any way she is willing. So far, she's accommodated them fully, as have her weird crowds. Does Palin even know she is slandering a highly respected American intellectual? Again and again? In my book, this vilifying of Rashid Khalidi is one of the most disgusting things I've ever witnessed in presidential politics.

What Palin is doing by this is quite vile, bordering on willful evil. Palin, whose career as mayor of Wasilla began with false accusations that John Stein's name "sounds Jewish," will stir hatred any time anywhere, if it suits her whims.